Well, here we go! It's time for the weekend homework, and this week I'm going to provide you with a number of links to Web sites that you can use again and again. I'll try and do this again in the future, but for now, this will give you a great head start. Bookmark these.

Climate Progress -- Run by a scientist who's actually conducted empirical research on global climate change, this is a great resource. He's funny, intelligent and has no problem calling out Democrats or Republicans who are unwilling to accept scientific facts. Global warming is real, it's important, and we have technology available right now to begin combating the problem.

David Sirota -- One of my favorite columnists and author of Hostile Takeover. Sirota takes Republicans and conservative Democrats to task, focusing mainly on corruption related to lobbying issues and how bribery can affect a politician's decisions. In addition, he makes a point of showing the positive side of government and how grassroots organizations are making a real difference. Well worth subscribing to.

Paul Krugman -- A liberal economist, one of the best on this planet. Krugman's analyses on everything from the dangers of unregulated forces to universal health care to classic economics is always well researched and intelligent.

Enjoy these. The most recent posts are excellent.
 

There's not better way to celebrate the 5-year anniversary of the illegal Iraq Occupation than with a birthday cake of truth. Yes, fine citizens, it's time for you to come to grips with the painful truth that often coincides with this particular type of mistake. In this, case, the mistakes came from our so-called "experts" on the Middle East who helped cheerlead us into war.

No doubt you know a lot of people right now who still argue that, given the facts involved, the U.S. had no choice to go into war. "Everyone was fooled," they say. "You can't blame the Bush Administration just because their intelligence was faulty." Others you know might even take it a step further and say, "Well, even the experts believed Iraq was a threat. They went on TV and said so!"

Guess what? There WAS a handful of reporters who actually went out to find the truth before the war. Their names were John Walcott, Jonathon Landay, Warren Strobel and Jonathon Landay, among others at the Knight Ridder Newspapers bureau. While Bush was handing off lies as quickly as possible, Knight Ridder was questioning the links between Saddam Hussein and Iraq, questioning every lie that was being spread on the Network news stations. The reporters at Knight Ridder were actually talking to real experts in the middle east, and they were finding no evidence of WMD's in Iraq, no connection to Al Qaeda, and nothing but lies being spread by the Bush Administration.

Click here to read the full story, courtesy of the Huffington Post.

So why weren't these reporters taken more seriously? Why couldn't the Network News anchors find this information themselves? Why did every half-blown "expert" go on TV and completely cheerlead us into a war that's cost us over $1 trillion?

Find the answer.